Yes, the aesthetics of Gears are extremely boring (or did they became boring after everything else started looking like it?) and edgy, but this is a honest to god great shooter with a FLAWLESS pacing. One of the best examples of a perfectly tight 7+ hours campaign that just works; from the introduction of the mechanics to new and exciting weapons to horror inducing hallways to cooperative set-pieces to blind minibosses to huge arenas to sniper galleries it’s just so, so good. The only complain I have, apart from the obvious silliness of the tone epic employed, is that an otherwise excellent multiplayer was impossible to play due to the lack of dedicated servers.

I played this about 11 years after it first released.
Got a cheap copy for my 360.
I absolutely loved this game.
The storyline makes very little sense, but it’s a shooter…does it have to?
In typical shooter fashion your AI teammates are probably just shy of hitting 100 IQ between them.
I think it aged pretty well. Still a lot of fun.

This game has solid mechanics, but the levels designed around it make the gameplay feel awkward. I played it on hardcore and I had a rough time. The level design often makes it hard to move around well, I often found myself sticking to the wrong cover when I'm trying to do a roll and getting killed as a result. The base enemies are designed to be your equal in how they move with like arena shooter bots as well as how their health and weapons being the same as yours. But your allies suck, they constantly stand up in the middle of a gunfight instead of taking cover, they block your shots, and they rarely obey your squad orders for arbitrary reasons. The allied AI being so ass makes this game super frustrating when the enemies both outnumber you and sometimes can insta-kill you depending on their weapons. Enemy AI will sometimes just ignore your allies and walk past them to specifically kill you, and it often feels super hard to do anything about it with how spongy they are and how they rarely get stunned. The checkpoints are also spread out pretty far and you will have to replay obnoxiously large segments of gameplay at times, they also give you checkpoints before cutscenes, which just gets annoying. The game also has the bare minimum for story and the cutscenes just look awkward, you don't get any story here, which makes it easy to skip this entry though. The pacing also feels off, and gimmicks overstay their welcome, and just become annoying after a while. Overall, I like the gameplay mechanics, but the campaign is very rough in every other regard, I think you're better off skipping to the second game unless you want to see firsthand how the series started.

A decent debut for the series with that incredibly effective ‘Mad World’ commercial, was very awesome back in 2006. Playing this now, Gears of War tells a one-dimensional story with loads of testosterone; shoot, blow and rip stuff apart is your objective that thankfully doesn’t overstay its welcome. Mindless entertainment that’s best enjoyed couch coop on insane over beers and stories. Movement and shooting always feels heavy with delay, spotty bullet detection that takes getting used to. Influential ideas and designs are very apparent, cover and reload mechanics are enjoyable. I’d say it was worth the one story run, I’ve not played online multiplayer which is/was good from what I hear.